Assessment

Knowing in which direction we are heading; knowing from where we have come. These components of building a track record of success are incredibly important to all of the people who make up the CPS community. Parents, faculty, administration and funders need to know that our program is having an impact on the lives we touch.

A pre-kindergarten students practices writing the word 'milk' on the SMART board.

Anyone who spends time in our school can see the immediate impact CPS is having on these students. It is evident in the children's joyful faces, eagerness to learn and obvious respect for their teachers. In addition, we need to be able to show in tangible terms the ways in which CPS has increased our students' ability to be successful life-long learners.

Toward this goal, Dr. Alex Schuh of FRONTIER 21 Education Solutions is conducting a five year longitudinal tracking study of the Community Partnership School students. The study tracks the social, emotional, and academic/cognitive growth of the students who entered the school in its first cohort of students in the fall of 2006. The study will also create a tracking process and database that will enable the Community Partnership School to follow its students beyond the five years of this study.

Dr. Alex Schuh is an experienced evaluator and education consultant based in Philadelphia. Dr. Schuh has directed numerous evaluations of educational programs, including several longitudinal studies examining the impact of educational interventions on the academic growth of low income students. Dr. Schuh holds a Ph.D. in Educational Psychology from the University of Pennsylvania, where he studied policy research and evaluation, collaborative learning, and the use of computer media for learning. He received his Baccalaureate from Yale University in Cultural Anthropology. He has conducted both qualitative and quantitative evaluations of many local and national education programs, including Community Technology Centers, distance education programs, museum school partnerships, after-school programs, reading programs, technology integration programs, charter schools and teacher training projects. Since 1992, Dr. Schuh has helped to design and establish more than 30 charter schools across the country, including a charter school based on the ideas of emotional intelligence and two virtual charter schools for distance learning. He is an expert in mixed method evaluations and in the use of data for educational program improvement. He is currently tracking the academic growth of over 500 students in the Children’s Scholarship Fund Philadelphia program, a private scholarship program for low income elementary school students in Philadelphia.

The long term study will examine the gains students are making from year to year in key subjects of Language Arts (reading and language use) and Mathematics, as well as general academic performance, social and emotional growth.